Oklahoma Commission: 'Serious flaws in capital sentencing system'

Included at the end of the Commission’s report is a separate
study entitled “Race and Death Sentencing for Oklahoma Homicides, 1990-2012,”
which examines “the possibility that the race of the defendant and/or victim
affects who ends up on death row (Report
at 211, 214).

Among the study’s key findings was the fact that “homicides
with white victims are the most likely to result in a death sentence.”
(Id. at 217.)

This study states that, in Oklahoma, criminal defendants –
like Jones – who are accused and convicted of killing white victims are
nearly two times more likely to receive a sentence of death than if
the victim is nonwhite.

For homicides involving only male victims, a death sentence
is approximately three times more likely in cases involving male
victims when that victim is white, the report notes. In
the document
filed on June 23with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, Julius’s
attorneys believe that the race study shows that his death sentence is
unconstitutional.

A more recent study published in the North Carolina Law
Review in 2016 titled “Untangling
the Role of Race in Capital Charging and Sentencing in North Carolina,”
1990-2009 by Catherine Grosso and Barbara O’Brien, associate professors at
Michigan State University’s College of Law also finds, “The white victim
effect was the clearest and strongest finding in this study analysis,” Grosso
says. “Race still matters in the criminal justice system, and it shouldn’t.

According to the Death Penalty
Information Center over 75 percent of the murder victims in cases
resulting in an execution were white, even though nationally only 50 percent of
murder victims generally are white.

About Matt

An analysis of crime and punishment from the perspective of a former prosecutor and current criminal justice practitioner.
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or postions of any county, state or federal agency.